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15 February 2006

Time to take a break from reality. All these cartoons-shmartoons, birds-shmirds, ...

I know all of you will cry gevalt, seeing the subject of this post. I know that there are about four or five persons in the whole blue world, that including me and, possibly, Andrew Ian Dodge, that would be interested in the subject.

But it is irresistible. Anyway, the subject is this mysterious Maurice Leiter person who is presented by that lefty professor I have mentioned here, Brian Leiter. It seems that once a week or so the learned prof provides the Maurice Leiter bloke a place on his blog to publish some exceptionally poor poetry. Usually it is full of social and political innuendo, directed against Western capitalistic, bourgeois, disastrous, ... [fill the blanks yourself] way of life and the Western society in general.

I have stumbled on one of Maurice L.'s creations that left me breathless. Titled "Lessons of History", it derides (maybe deservedly, but this is not the point) a Russian mogul or "oligarch", as they are called there these days. The poem ends this way:

Have we not met this barbarian before
Who remembers only what flatters
Small consolation for the Russian people
Innocent of what'’s in store for them

Yeah. Lessons of history indeed. The Russian people Maurice Leiter so touchingly patronizes know their history much better than their American patron. They know what these 70+ years of history done to them and to their country, Mr. Leiter (and prof. Leiter). No oligarch could make it worse.

The next question will be - who is that Maurice Leiter fellow, after all? My googling brought up only one Maurice Leiter of any prominence. A lawyer, whose name is very closely linked to that of Philip Morris, for which hardly benevolent outfit Maurice seems to have done a lot of good jobs.

So, could it be possible that these two are one and the same Maurice? Kinda Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation here then (in reverse, timewise): during the day a corporate shark and during the night a leftie producing touching poems, albeit of revolting quality?

Curiosier and curiosier, eh? But, of course, it is only a wild guess, and if Maurice the corporate lawyer is not Maurice the poet - my apologies. Please do proceed with protecting Philip Morris, Maurice - I am smoking Parliament.

In general, the aroma of mystery surrounding the name Brian Leiter is very strong. Like, for example, who is that person that hates the professor so much that he/she found it worth the effort to get to Wikipedia piece on the professor and do something awful like this:

(Click on the picture to zoom in)

I have a gut feeling that there are quite a few thrillers to be written about the professor and the mysteries surrounding him.

But reality calls back, the Elder's subsonic whistle is pressing me back into the usual Hasbara duties...